Amid mounting fears over a possible Russian all-out invasion, Ukraine is facing a threat on two fronts – land and cyberspace.
“Cyberattacks look like an ideal way for Russia to achieve its goals (to destabilize the country),” Yegor Aushev, co-founder of the Kyiv-based Cyber Unit Technologies and Cyber School, told the Kyiv Independent.
Russia is infamously known for using Ukraine as a laboratory to test out its cyberweapons, flirting around with new tactics to stir panic while occasionally causing serious damages that lead to financial losses.
Since Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas in 2014, Ukraine has repeatedly been targeted. The country suffered roughly 288,000 cyberattacks in the first 10 months of 2021, The Guardian reported, citing official figures. Russian state-backed groups were linked to a growing tide of cyberattacks in Ukraine, though proving the source of such actions is notoriously difficult.
So far, the purpose of the cyberattacks has been to destabilize the situation in Ukraine and frighten Ukrainians with fake bomb threats and other fictional scenarios, according to Aushev.
But given Russia’s extensive experience in the cybersphere, no one knows what it’s capable of doing or whether it already has control over Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, Aushev said.
Ukraine claimed that Russia was behind the recent massive cyberattack that crashed dozens of Ukrainian government sites on the night of Jan. 13-14, though Moscow has denied being involved.
The hackers left behind a message warning Kyiv to “expect the worst” after months of tensions over the Russian military descending near Ukraine. Russia massed over 130,000 troops, a wide range of military equipment and aircraft along the Ukrainian border and in the occupied parts of Ukraine.
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